What’s new in Qualcomm Snapdragon 855?

Qualcomm is the leading player in the smartphone industry. Almost all the smartphones are powered by the company’s Snapdragon lineup of processors especially flagships. The Snapdragon 800 series has been powering high-end smartphones for years now. For 2018, it has been Snapdragon 845 and for 2019, it will be Snapdragon 855 with 5G support which has just been announced.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 has been under the rumour mill for few months. The specifications of the chipset were leaked a few weeks back. All the rumours and leaks indicated that it will bear the name Snapdragon 8150, but it turned out they were wrong. However, it was being speculated as well the last moment rumour suggested that 8150 could be the internal naming of the platform. Whatever, the new Qualcomm chipset is now official and is called Snapdragon 855.

The Snapdragon 855 brings more to the series other than support for 5G with the help of X50 modem. The newest silicon from Qualcomm will be manufactured on a 7nm process. The AI performance of this chipset is 3 times that of its predecessor i.e., Snapdragon 845 says the company. Also, it features the world’s first Computer Vision Image Signal Processor. This new image processor supports 4K HDR video recording at 60 fps utilizing only 25% of the power used by its forerunner.

Normally, the Snapdragon 855 will ship with a newer X24 LTE modem however, the OEMs can replace it with the X50 modem for 5G support. Smartphones powered by this new chip will be announced starting early next year.